What Happens After the Encounter?
Today, I want to share something from a message I had the privilege of sharing at my church that I haven't stopped thinking about. I was preaching from Acts 2, and I found myself saying something out loud that I've known quietly for a long time but haven't always known how to name. It's this: You can have a genuine encounter with God and still stay exactly the same. Ouch.
I've watched it happen. I've lived it myself. Someone comes forward at an altar, weeping, undone, clearly touched by the Spirit. And then three months later, nothing has shifted. There's the same patterns, the same stuck places, the same quiet distance from God that brought them to the altar in the first place. And I'm not sure we really know what to do with that, because in some parts of our charismatic culture, the encounter is the moment. It's the thing we build services around, the thing we share testimonies about, the thing we secretly measure our spiritual life by: Did something happen? Did I feel it?
The Missing Piece
The early Church devoted themselves to something alongside the encounter. Acts 2:42 calls it the apostles' "didaché," or teaching (Strong's G1322). And in the first century, teaching wasn't content you consumed; it was formation through sustained proximity—truth falling on a life, over time, until the life starts to change shape. (Photo via Pexels)
One of the Desert Fathers, a man named Abba Poemen, put it like this: "The nature of water is soft, that of stone is hard; but if a bottle is hung above the stone, allowing the water to fall drop by drop, it wears away the stone. So it is with the Word of God; it is soft and our heart is hard, but the one who hears the Word of God often, opens his heart to the fear of God."
Drop by Drop
Drop by drop. That image has been sitting with me all day. The encounter is the river... sudden, overwhelming, undeniable. And it is real, and it is scriptural, and I love it. I would never want to argue against it. The Spirit moves and things happen that cannot be explained, and that is a gift. But the river alone doesn't always do what we hope it will do.
The drop does something the river can't. It finds the same spot, again and again, until something that was closed begins to open. It's not dramatic. It doesn't make a good testimony. Sometimes the work is boring and slow, but over months, over years, something in the stone of a human heart starts to give way. That's what formation is. It's the slow, quiet, unglamorous work of letting the Word find you in the same place over and over—a practice, a community, a rhythm of teaching that you don't just attend but give yourself to. The early Church, according to Acts 2, devoted themselves to this, as well as fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer—four pillars that changed the world!
Lean in to Teaching
How cool is this? The Greek word Luke uses in Acts 2:42 for devoted is proskarterountes (Strong's G4342). It means to lean toward something with your whole strength, continuously—not a one-off decision, but an ongoing posture. They didn't just "show up" to the apostles' teaching. They leaned into it.
I've been in ministry for over thirty years, and here is what I've noticed. When people drift from consistent, formative teaching, they don't dramatically fall away; they just slowly stop being shaped. The stone stops softening. And they wonder why they feel stuck... why the encounters that used to carry them don't seem to reach them anymore. They keep going to the river, but something in them has quietly closed. (Photo via Pexels)
The Power of Encounters and Formation
What I want to gently offer is this: the encounters and the formation were always meant to go together. They need each other. Encounter without formation tends to stay on the surface. Formation without encounter can become dry and dutiful. But when both are present, something happens that is hard to describe and impossible to manufacture...
So let me ask you an honest question. Is there somewhere you are genuinely being formed right now—not just inspired, not just informed? A place where the Word is falling on you, drop by drop, and you are letting it do its slow work? A community, a practice, a rhythm you have leaned into rather than just attended? If the answer is no, if you've been living on encounters alone, or if even the encounters have dried up and you're not quite sure when that happened, I want to say to you gently, it's not too late to find your way back to the drop. The stone doesn't have to stay hard.
Where is the Word falling on you right now, drop by drop? It's worth sitting with that question today.
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Roma Waterman
HeartSong Prophetic Alliance
Email:Â click here
Websites:Â www.romawaterman.com
|Â training.romawaterman.com
Roma Waterman has been one of Australia's foremost Christian artists for over twenty years and has traveled the globe leading worship and teaching on the prophetic, worship leading and songwriting. Her passion is not just to release Heaven's song over the nations, but to teach others to do the same.
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